Stellantis is having a tough year. Here's a look at all the issues facing the automaker.

Stellantis has been in the news a lot lately, but not in ways that please shareholders, company executives, rank-and-file workers and most others with a connection to the company.

No, it’s been a noisy, turbulent and troubling year for the automaker that owns the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands, and the future isn’t exactly clear. Stellantis, which celebrated its third anniversary in January following the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, is already shopping for a new CEO.

Here are a few of the key developments and what we know:

US sales and market share down

Stellantis has seen both sales and market share decline, a trend underway before this year. Stellantis ended 2023 as an outlier among its competitors for its sales losses, and its market share declines dropped below not only General Motors, Toyota and Ford but also South Korea’s Hyundai. Since then, Stellantis has seen consecutive quarterly reports of 20% or more in declining sales in the United States, and the company recently dropped below Honda in market share as well. That seems significant for a company that includes the Chrysler legacy and one of the most valuable brand names in the industry in Jeep.

Stellantis’ eye-popping profits last year — almost $20 billion and an 11% bump from the year prior — helped secure a $39.5 million total compensation package for CEO Carlos Tavares, who is now under fire as those profits have dropped significantly from the same period in 2023. The company also recently lowered its financial guidance for the year .

Fights with key stakeholders

Those high profits, which made Stellantis such a standout, are one of the issues that Stellantis’ U.S. dealers raised in their blistering letter in September calling out Tavares over the direction of the company. The dealers wrote that they’d been sounding the alarm for years.

They attributed “reckless short-term decision-making” in order to secure those profits as leading to the “rapid degradation” of the company’s American brands. The company, in response, touted some recent improvements in market share and sales and in reducing inventory, which has become a big drag on the company. It also scolded the dealers for airing their grievances publicly.

But dealers aren’t the only folks mad at Stellantis. The UAW has been withering in its criticism of Tavares as it threatens a potential strike — at one or more facilities within weeks — over what it says are the company’s failures to live up to its investment commitments negotiated last year.

Stellantis, citing a volatile industry climate, has said a strike under these circumstances would be illegal, which the union dismisses. The company, which has filed multiple lawsuits against the UAW referencing what it calls "sham grievances," has delayed the reopening of the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, announced a shift cut at Warren Truck, and won’t say whether Dodge Durango production will remain in Detroit or move to Canada as the union says is the plan. Unions in Italy are also frustrated over the company’s operations there.

The company’s coming vehicle launches are also heavy on electric vehicles at a time when that sales picture is more complicated than it appeared last year, prompting some experts to question the strategy .

Oh, shareholders have even sued the company , which saw its stock price at $12.96 per share just before noon Friday. In late March, the price hit $29.18 per share before its fairly steep decline.

It'll be worth watching to see whether the Stellantis-led partnership with Leapmotor to sell Chinese-made electric vehicles in Europe and others parts of the globe boosts the company's fortunes significantly.

Management shake-ups

On Thursday, Stellantis announced a new round of executive changes , with the global head of Jeep, Antonio Filosa, adding responsibility for the North American region to his duties. He replaces Carlos Zarlenga, formerly head of Stellantis in Mexico, who replaced Mark Stewart earlier this year after Stewart left to lead Goodyear.

Natalie Knight is also out as chief financial officer, replaced by Doug Ostermann, formerly Stellantis China’s chief operating officer. New leaders will also be in place for Enlarged Europe and China divisions as well as the Maserati and Alfa Romeo brands. The company saw earlier notable departures as well, including Tim Kuniskis, the executive most closely identified in recent years with Dodge’s high horsepower reputation (he also led Ram), and Jim Morrison, who had been head of Jeep in North America.

CEO search underway

Although Stellantis’ board said this week that it’s “unanimous in its support of Carlos Tavares,” the company is making clear that it sees a change of leadership ahead. The company said Tavares will retire at the end of his contract in early 2026, a shift from an earlier statement that suggested he might stay on. Board Chair John Elkann is leading the committee searching for a successor, with work set to wrap up by the end of next year. Tavares’ vague comments about “arrogance” during the company’s Investor Day in Auburn Hills in June highlighted a shift in the broader perception about the company beyond the falling stock price and concerns about job cuts.

Michigan footprint worries

Speculation about the fate of Stellantis’ U.S. headquarters and tech center in Auburn Hills isn’t new (it was brought up by some company watchers at the time of the merger). In 2022, the Free Press reported that the company was weighing whether it needed so much space , with a possibility that it might lease out a portion of the 5.4-million-square-foot complex. During last year’s strike, worries were rampant that the company was prepared to unload the complex. But with significant U.S. blue- and white-collar job cuts over the past year, the current flood of bad news about Stellantis and company statements that it intends to shift work to lower-cost countries, the concerns have emerged once again.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was asked this week whether the company might downsize its headquarters presence after Crain’s Detroit Business reported she was in talks with the company to keep the headquarters in Michigan. She didn’t provide much clarity, urging a Free Press reporter not to “read too much into it.”

“I just really wanted to say that we’re going to stay close to Stellantis and we’re always going to work closely with them or any company here to make sure that they’re successful here,” said Whitmer, who answered “no,” when asked whether she’d been given a heads-up that something would happen. “We’ve had ongoing conversations with all of the (automakers), frankly, and a lot of other companies in Michigan just to touch base, make sure that if they foresee anything in the future that we’re their first call and that we always want to be good partners."

Free Press staff writer Paul Egan contributed to this report.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com . Become a subscriber . Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Stellantis is having a tough year. Here's a look at all the issues facing the automaker.